Sustainability nonprofit returns in new guise

The N.C. Sustainability Center -- Under New Management.

That could be the motto of the diehard little nonprofit in Raleigh that's been around since 1998 in various forms and is holding a launch party Thursday for its latest iteration.

In the newest version of the organization, an MBA is in charge, state funds are not in the budget, and the talk is of expansion.

The mission of the N.C. Sustainability Center is to demonstrate a link between sustainable business practices and economic opportunities, a connection that still has many skeptics. The NCSC tracks national news and information on sustainability, will sponsor statewide events and will promote North Carolina businesses that practice sustainability.

Articles about such businesses, to be posted on the group's web site, will be written by freelancers and interns, said Katie Kross, the NCSC's president.

The 2-person organization has a budget of $125,000 this year, largely from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in Winston-Salem and also from individual and corporate foundations.

The launch party is being held at the downtown Raleigh office of clean energy investment fund Cherokee.

After getting her MBA from UNC Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School, Kross managed biz school's Center for Sustainable Enterprise, and afterwards helped create Duke University's Center for Energy, Development and the Global Environment at Duke's Fuqua School of Business.

The NCSC went by two names previously. It was formed last year out of Sustainable North Carolina, a membership dues-based group that hosted North Carolina sustainability awards but went dormant in 2010. Sustainable North Carolina emerged out of an earlier organization, Save Our State North Carolina, which funded demo projects for potential solutions to hog waste disposal problems.